The Eternal Struggle with Numbers

I must have talked about this before, how I struggle with numbers. The irony, am I right, when my very name means number? I don’t mean mathematical numbers here though. Fortunately, math has always been my forte. Which is precisely why I did so well in Physics and Computer Applications and then went on to teach English and study psychology. But I digress. When I say numbers, I mean quantity. The number of followers someone has. The number of likes a post gets. More recently, the views my reels get. The number on the scale. The number of kilometres I have covered during my morning walk. The number of steps I took and the calories I burned. You get the gist. I have always maintained that if your happiness is tied to a number, you can’t be a very happy person because there is always a higher number. Quality versus quantity, I keep saying. I try to put it into practice too, but it isn’t as easy as it sounds. I’d like to focus on how much I enjoyed my walk, but if I forgot to record my outdoor walk on my watch, did it even count? I want to focus on the fact that I am learning a lot in my course right now, but if I get low marks, what does all that knowledge matter? Like I said, it’s not so easy. To put it in the succinct words of Christina Perri, “I’m only human.”

How this started was because of my perfume page on Instagram. Earlier this year, I chose to start posting reviews and photos of my perfumes on a separate Instagram page because even I could tell that the people around me were getting bored to death of hearing me go on and on about perfumes. I remember this brother of mine warning me on the phone, “I’ll listen to all your stories as long as it is not about a perfume.” So yes, I started the page and I posted stuff and I thought it would be all great fun. And it was! I met so many people who were equally obsessed with perfumes as I was. I made friends with whom I could talk perfumes without boring them. I chronicled my scents of the day and scents of the night and used beautiful songs to make beautiful reels that meant something to me. I kept note of the perfume layers I make and shared them with people who then tried them and liked them. As a bonus, I gained a decent amount of followers, crossed that 1K mark, then the 1.5K mark and was looking at the 2K in the near future.

Then suddenly, it stopped being fun. I realised I was a) spending way too much time on Instagram, scrolling mindlessly, b) focusing on the numbers, and c) compelling myself to make content every single day even if I didn’t feel like. Not to mention the material aspect of it – the desire to add more perfumes to my already significant (and in the eyes of a normal person, obscene) collection because of others’ reviews. I tried to make my peace with it and tried to focus on the best parts of it (the friendships I made over there, of course) while navigating the not so nice aspects of it. I told myself I was there not because I wanted to be an influencer and get free PR packages but simply to share my passion with people who understand. I told myself my worth wasn’t associated with a number. But it came to the point where it no longer sparked joy. I was done. I deactivated my perfume page on a whim, without thinking twice.

For the first few hours, I was distinctively uncomfortable. I pushed through that feeling of emptiness. It was like my eyes were getting adjusted to the darkness after I suddenly switched off the light overhead. But one thing I did was message two of the amazing friends I had made there through my personal profile so I wouldn’t lose them. That made me feel marginally better. I also deliberately wrapped my day around other habits I had before Instagram took over my day. I painted after a long time. I picked up my ukulele. I finished the book I had borrowed from the library. And just like that, I stopped looking at my phone as much. As I sat with my little girls, watching TV, my phone far away from me, I realised how mindful even watching Bluey can feel when I am not mindlessly scrolling through the likes on my recent post.

It’s not been many days and I can’t really say I will never go back to Instagram, but I am trying to have a better relationship with numbers. I deleted my author page on Facebook because I am trying to improve my relationship with my writing. In a way, I have gone back to where I was when I first started – sending my blogs out to the void without knowing how many people have read and “liked” them. I don’t even bother to look at the numbers on my Youtube channel or my ukulele page because the numbers there don’t seem very important to me (for perspective, I have less than 300 followers on my ukulele page and less than 700 on my YouTube channel and I have no intention of trying to increase that number) In fact, that thought almost liberates me – that I can be creative for no one but myself. I am chronicling my scent of the day even now, taking notes of the layers I’m wearing, even making short videos. But I’m not posting them, because I want to find out which part of the process I enjoy. Is it the creation? Or the validation? I don’t know how this will go, but at least I’m doing something about it?

There’s one part of it that brought me immense joy and I can’t deny that I miss it. Just the other day, I was chatting with a seller on Carousell (the online place to buy and sell second hand items!) about the perfumes she had, and like it always happens when two perfume lovers meet, it ended up as long conversation about our collections. We ended up sharing our Fragrantica links, and she went “OH MY GOD I FOLLOW YOU ON INSTAGRAM!” And she told me how she bought a rare discontinued perfume just based on my review of that one and how much she loves it. And I realised I really do like that – when people trust me enough to actually invest in something that I said was good, and then end up liking it. For now though, I am okay. I mean, hey, I am sitting and actually writing a blog post after ages, so that must mean something.

Wrapping it up on that positive note. My struggle with numbers remains, but it doesn’t have to consume my life. Let’s see how well I do in my self imposed abstinence. Wish me luck!